


and definitely maybe I will live to love

by boxedblondes



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gays Can't Drive But Villanelle CAN, Non-Graphic Violence, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Villanelle's Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:12:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18694903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxedblondes/pseuds/boxedblondes
Summary: Eve and Villanelle and a road trip across America.





	1. like a moth into a flame

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you binge Killing Eve twice in a month and the fanfic bug just sneaks up on you, you know? Watching season 1 the second time around just flipped some switch in my brain that made me go all Villaneve!! Road!! Trip!! and now here we are.
> 
> This fic picks up at some vague point after season 1/the first episode of season 2, in a slightly au version of events in which Villanelle escapes the hospital without acquiring an infection and recovers at a safe house somewhere, and Eve goes back to the office in London to conduct intelligence on (other) killers until, well...
> 
>  
> 
> Un-beta'd. Let me know if there are any mistakes. Will update sporadically, probably (sorry), but WILL be completed. I won't leave you - or myself - hanging. 
> 
> Title from "All Die Young" by the Smith Westerns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Everybody's Lonely" by Jukebox the Ghost

When Niko finally leaves her, it is so much more anticlimactic than Eve ever imagined. So much easier. It’s been a long time coming, something they’re both simultaneously preparing for and dancing around. So when Niko comes down to the kitchen on a Friday morning with a certain look on his face, Eve can hardly say she’s surprised.

“I have to go,” he says. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“I know,” Eve says.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know.”

By Monday evening, when Eve comes back from the office, he’s gone. She is reminded of a line from a poem, about the world ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. When she realizes her husband’s shoes are no longer by the front door, that his half of their wardrobe is empty, she lets out a little whimper of her own. She vows it will be the only vocalization of her sadness she will allow herself.

She does not text him.

She does not call him.

That night, Eve crawls into her side of the bed and curls up there, falls asleep easily and dreams of the English countryside, of miles and miles of nothing but grass and wildflowers. Niko texts her in the morning: _Let me know what you want to do about the house_. 

She leaves him on read.

She goes to work.

*

When Eve was twelve years old, she got it in her head that she wanted to have a garden. So, that summer, from April to July, she planted tomato plants, spindly things with sour leaves and thick stems. She kept them in a tall stone planter at the corner of the porch and watered them each morning with a small tin watering can. 

There was something magical about it – the process of life itself. The plants, which had looked so weak and flimsy when she bought them for one dollar apiece at the gardening store, matured into tall, leafy things. Eve could recall that summer distinctly, far more ingrained in her memory than any other she could remember. The time seemed to pass in increments, the days inextricably tied to the life cycle of her beloved tomato plants.

Mid-May. Delicate yellow flowers began to unfold and bloom and wither away, one at a time, leaving tiny green pimply things in their place.

June. The little green blobs began to grow and hang, swollen and heavy, from each plant. Their skin, when she touched them, was sticky, tacky with some organic dust. They gleamed in the sunlight after each summer downpour, water droplets sparkling like something holy.

Late July. Eve’s tomatoes grew fat and juicy red, as big as her fist. The ants loved them, and so did the wasps, who swarmed the tomatoes that got too ripe and slipped onto the dirt. Eve harvested them in the cool evening on her last day of summer vacation. She saved the biggest and best for last, took the biggest bite she could manage. It tasted like summer, like freedom, like the end of something beautiful. 

Eve didn’t grow anything the next summer. By then, her parents had split up and she had been whisked away across the ocean, chasing daylight in an airplane over the sea like a reverse Pilgrim.

All of her friends from school thought it was _so cool_ that she was moving to England. “You’re going to have so much fun,” they said, over and over again, like she was going on some luxurious vacation rather than gathering her whole life up in both hands and just hoping it wouldn’t all slip through her fingers.

She promised her friends she would write, and they promised they would write back. And they did, for a while, she and her half dozen penpals. But then they got older and busier, and things like writing to some girl you used to know in middle school didn’t seem like such a priority anymore. And then, like her tomato plants after they had borne their fruit, the last of Eve’s friendships just withered away.

*

The idea doesn’t come to her quickly, but rather in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks. Eve has been living in her big, empty house for too long now, drawing out the inevitable – when she will have to go apartment-hunting in all the worst parts of London until she finds someplace she doesn’t utterly hate, when she will have to sell her house – _their_ house – because she told Niko she could do it, because she’s a goddamn adult. And she will. Sell it, that is. When she feels more like a real person again and less like a tumbleweed just rolling around in the dust and dirt.

And so she goes through the motions, treks along behind realtors as they show her one place after another, each identical to the others in their mundanity. There’s something wrong about each place: too small, too big, too old, too expensive. But Eve continues to do her duty, makes all her appointments with the realtors. She puts the house on the market, too, gets some good offers from young couples just starting out their lives together. She meets with some of them, but they remind her of how she used to be, when she first married Niko, and that realization makes her stomach turn.

After that, she lets someone else handle it. Tells the realtor to sell the house to the highest bidder, to the most promising buyer, and tell her when it’s done.

It’s just after noon on a Wednesday in early March when the realtor calls her. Eve is at work, on her lunch break, picking at a sandwich from the corner shop like if she just wills herself hard enough to have an appetite, it will actually work.

The house is sold. Eve needs to move out by the twentieth. She has absolutely nowhere to stay.

So, of course, she buys a plane ticket.

She can’t leave just yet. There’s still so many things to do – packing up the house, for one. But the intent is there. She’s leaving. She _is_. Not now, but soon.

For the time being, she packs up the rest of her life here into tidy boxes, both real and metaphorical. She packs up the house, one room at a time, and takes carloads of boxes to a storage container she rents for £40 a month. It’s a tiny, hollow thing, nothing more than a box itself really. But it’s perfect for storing her old life away, hers and Niko’s. 

Eve quits her job, which is made infinitely more simple by the fact that she never was an employee there in the first place, at least not officially. Not legally. Everything has been under-the-table in the most clandestine way. Her paychecks – handfuls of cash slapped haphazardly on her desk every two weeks. Her benefits – nonexistent. Her office – nothing more than a repurposed closet in a dingy corner of London, nothing you’d be able to find unless you were really, truly looking for it.

There’s Kenny, of course. And Elena. Eve gives them each a hug and an excuse (she’s just going on a little, well-deserved vacation) and makes them promise to call her if they need anything while she’s away. She neglects to tell them that she doesn’t know when she’ll be back, _if_ she’ll be back. That seems like a problem for another time.

Eve doesn’t say goodbye to Carolyn. She doesn’t come into the office much, anymore, not after their secret group of EveCarolynElenaKenny became the detritus it is now. It’s alright. Eve doesn’t have anything to say to Carolyn Martens, anyway.

*

The strange thing about being back in the States, Eve thinks, is that it doesn’t really feel like coming home. Not the way she expected. In England she was always the odd one out, the foreigner – even after years and years of living and working there. Her accent’s a dead giveaway, not to mention the way she looks. Being not-white, she’s learned, marks you as an Other no matter where you are in the world.

But she’d thought, privately, that being back on American soil would feel different, that she would feel a little less like people were always staring at her, listening to her, trying to find out just where she was from. And yet, it seems that all her years in the U.K. have made her identity even more inscrutable to the prying eye.

For one thing, she seems to have forgotten how American money works. At the hotel, she tries to pay for her room with exact change – you know, like a helpful person – but gets tripped up over how many cents a quarter is worth and whether that other little silver coin is a nickel or a dime. 

“Traveling?” the woman behind the desk asks.

“Oh, oh yes,” says Eve. “Sorry, I’m a little jetlagged.”

“It’s fine,” says the woman. Eve digs in her coin purse, tries to find another penny. “Don’t worry about it.”

Eve forgets about her elbow, loses her sense of depth perception for a moment, and manages to knock all her change to the floor, where they bounce and scatter. She bends down to retrieve them, chases a rolling coin on a collision course for the crack underneath the desk.

“Listen,” says the woman. “Do you maybe have another dollar bill? I can just give you change for that.”

“Oh,” says Eve from the floor. “Yes, I do.” She stands up too quickly and smacks her head on the underside of the desk. The receptionist is polite enough to pretend not to notice.

When she gets to her room, finally, she opens the door to find a person-shaped mass curled up on the bed. Before Eve can even react, the person reaches over to turn on the bedside lamp and swings itself up into a standing position, all in one fluid motion.

Eve’s brain takes a moment to catch up, to recognize her.

It’s Villanelle. Because of course it is.

“Oh shit,” Eve says. “I stabbed you.”

“Yes,” says Villanelle. “It hurt.” Her face betrays nothing, but Eve remembers the pain in her eyes when the knife went in. Eve remembers the feel of it, the blade meeting resistance ever so briefly, then sliding home. It had felt raw, visceral, a solid feeling that extended all along her arm. Eve had been reliving the muscle memory for months. She’d assumed it killed her – she killed her. It seemed, like it so often did nowadays, that she had been wrong.

And, oh. “Are you going to kill me?”

The smooth planes of Villanelle’s face finally shift, her eyebrows drawing close together, the corners of her mouth curling up into a bemused smile. “Why would I want to do that?” she asks. “And why,” she looks around the room, “would I want to do it _here_?”

“Because I stabbed you,” says Eve. “Because I _hurt_ you. Why else would you be here?”

“A nice holiday,” says Villanelle. “Rest and relaxation.” 

Eve had forgotten the exact nuances of Villanelle’s voice, how she rolled her Rs and let the vowels rest on her tongue. How the whole of the English language seemed to exist solely for her pleasure, for her to take apart and piece back together however she wished.

“Even a _psychopath_ ,” Villanelle spits the word, “like me deserves some down time every once in a while, don’t you think?”

“Yes, well, sure. But…” Eve shakes her head a little. “Why are you here?”

“For you, of course.”

“How did you know I would even be here?” Because here Eve is, in a tiny hotel in rural Connecticut. And she _knows_ Villanelle is good at her job, but even so – no one can be that good, can they?

“Mm. Well, you did grow up in the area, didn’t you?” Villanelle doesn’t pause long enough to let Eve answer. “But, really, you did take your sweet time getting here.”

“My flight was delayed.”

“I’ve been here for two weeks.” Villanelle jerks her head to the right. “Next door.”

And _Jesus_. Eve forgot all of this, somehow, in the past couple of months. Villanelle’s intelligence she remembered, sure, but the sheer crazy of her – Eve’s memory had not done it justice.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Villanelle asks. “You don’t have any family in the area. Not for a while.”

“I needed to get out.”

“Out?”

“Away. I needed to get away for a while.” Eve gestures vaguely. “You know.”

“I really don’t,” says Villanelle. 

Eve sighs. “I just.”

“It is your husband, yes? He left you.”

“How on _Earth_ do you know – you know what, it doesn’t matter. Yes, he left and I sold the house and I quit my job. Well, no, I didn’t _quit_ yet, but I don’t think I’m going back. And I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore, thanks to _you_ , and – ”

“Thanks to me?”

And, oh, does Villanelle look pleased. Smug, if Eve were to put a word to that facial expression. “Yes, you,” she says. “You ruined my life and apparently now you run it, too.”

“So you are here for me?”

“No,” says Eve. “Well, yes. Maybe. No, no. I’m not.”

Villanelle smiles at her, leans in a little. “I am a person,” she says, which, sure. “I am not a motive. Why are you here, Eve?”

And here’s the thing – Eve has _no idea_ why she’s here. She doesn’t have a motive, at least not one that she’s consciously decided upon. She packed her bags and bought a plane ticket, one-way, to New England. And now she’s here, mission complete, but she still feels like she’s in transit. Like there’s more to be done. And Villanelle is still watching her – catlike eyes, wide but alert, full lips, long neck, high cheekbones, skin smooth and bright – like she already knows what Eve’s answer will be, whatever it is. Like she’s stuck in transit, too, caught in the liminal space between the two of them.

“I’m here,” Eve starts.

“Yes?”

“To take a road trip.”

Villanelle pulls back, face morphing again into some cartoonish mix of surprise and distaste. “A _road trip_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?


	2. I can't feel no remorse (and you don't feel nothing back)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My goodness, thank you for all your kudos and kind words on the first chapter!! I can't believe my intrusive shower thought-inspired idea for a fic has resonated so well with you all. This is all I have written so far, so hang tight for the next chapter and enjoy the new episode tonight!
> 
> Chapter title from "Ophelia" by The Lumineers

The thing that people don’t know – at least, people who don’t live on the East Coast – is that New England in the summer is hot as hell. It sneaks up on you, is the thing. Spring comes on slowly, the last of the ice and snow melting glacier-slow as the trees start to green and the tulips start to blossom. But summer comes all at once – fierce and heavy, a wall of heat slamming into the whole of the Eastern seaboard at once.

Some summers, the heat lasts for weeks. Other times, it lasts for days. Either way, when it’s there, it’s omnipresent, hard to forget when most people don’t have central air but rather a few bulky air conditioning units bulging precariously from bedroom windows. 

Eve has forgotten what it feels like to be here in the fug of summer. It seems to have come early this year; they’re barely into May and already she can feel the sweat pooling beneath her arms the moment she steps outside. It dries in tacky, sour-smelling spots that make the fabric of her shirts feel somewhat stiffer at the armpits than anywhere else.

Villanelle, of course, seems to be blessed with a complete and total lack of sweat glands. She smells like baby powder and the lilac scent of women’s deodorant. Not that Eve is deliberately trying to smell her or anything. Nothing like that.

They need to get a move on. Eve has hardly left the hotel since she got here, subsiding on vending machine snacks and complimentary continental breakfasts. She mostly spends the days alternating between lying in bed, covers to her chin, and sitting under the spray in the shower, just staring at the water as it drips down the walls and beads on her skin. She is distantly aware that she might be depressed. 

Mostly because Villanelle keeps telling her she is.

To be honest, Eve doesn’t know how Villanelle spends her days. After the first night here, she “checked out” and has been staying in Eve’s room ever since. Eve never invited her to share the bed, but she does anyway. Villanelle leaves in the morning each day after spending an unfairly short amount of time in the bathroom, coming out looking more like a movie star than a contract killer. She comes back some time in the evening, always bringing dinner for Eve – something, invariably, in a greasy paper bag. Usually ethnic, but sometimes hamburgers.

It’s been a little over a week, which Eve doesn’t think is an unreasonably long time to sulk and marinate in one’s own emotions. Villanelle, though, is obviously teetering on the edge of going stir-crazy.

“I thought that road trips were supposed to be a little more fast-paced,” she says this evening. Eve is tucking into a delicious chicken parm, still warm and only just a little stale.

“Actually,” she says, mouth full, “they’re kind of the slowest, most monotonous things on the planet.”

“Then why on Earth would you want to go?” Villanelle says, exasperation leaking from every pore.

“Because…” Eve tries to think of a way to explain the appeal, the innately American desire to drive coast-to-coast in a just-this-side-of-too-small vehicle, living off of potato chips and four hours of sleep a night in shitty hotel beds. The idea is unappealing on its surface, she has to admit, especially to someone with Villanelle’s whole… personality. And it’s not like Eve can really explain it to herself, either. She just – _wants to go_.

And, for some reason, she wants this psychotic, alluring, angry, mysterious woman – for some reason, she wants Villanelle to come with her.

So Eve shrugs. “Because it’s fun,” she says. “I promise.”

“Well, I suppose I don’t have anything better to do,” Villanelle says. “And you are so pretty when you have a goal.”

*

“You and I must have two very different definitions of the word ‘fun,”” Villanelle says about three hours later, somewhere in Pennsylvania. “This state is so _long_.”

“Yeah, well.” Eve is doing her best to stay centered in their lane as gusts of wind and rain buffet the little four-door they rented. “Don’t ever drive through Texas, then. Or California.”

“Where are we going, Eve?”

Eve checks the GPS. “Uh, a Best Western in Lock Haven.”

“No, I mean after.”

“After?”

Villanelle holds her hands in the air and looks skyward. “The grand finale, the end of the road. Where is your extended car trip leading us?”

Eve continues to watch the road. The windshield wipers are thumping along steadily, side-to-side. She lets herself listen to them for a moment. “I don’t know,” she says. “I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

The wipers continue to thump, rain drumming down on the roof of the car. Villanelle is quiet for a moment, then asks, quite out of the blue, “Do you want to see it?”

“See what?” asks Eve, distracted by the semi truck kicking up sprays of rainwater ahead of her.

“My scar,” says Villanelle. “You gave it to me, after all. Don’t you want to see your handiwork?”

She unbuckles her seatbelt and begins pulling her shirt up from where it’s tucked into her jeans. “Here, pull over,” she says.

“What? No!” Eve swerves a little as Villanelle’s cold hand reaches over to wrap around her right wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” says Villanelle. “Go ahead, you can touch it. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“I don’t want to – God, let go of me!”

“No.”

Villanelle tugs on Eve’s hand, brings it down onto the console between them. She traces Eve’s fingers for a moment, touches that are quick and ticklish, then wraps her hand around it firmly. Eve tries very hard to drive in a straight line with only one hand on the wheel. At seventy miles per hour. In the rain. She does realize, dimly, that they are holding hands.

“Maybe later,” says Villanelle.

*

Villanelle continues to be herself, and absolutely does not let the subject drop.

In Cleveland, she tries a new tactic. That is, she asks about Niko again.

“How is your husband?” she asks, as nonchalant as if she’s asking about the weather.

“Hm,” says Eve. She wonders briefly, naively, if Villanelle will let it go if Eve pretends like she didn’t hear her.

“Your husband. Niko? Have you spoken to him?”

A lost cause, then. “Nope,” says Eve. “No, I have not.”

“Why? It always seemed to me like you cared about him. I mean, you always used to talk about him.”

“Since when did I _use_ to talk to you at all?”

“Oh, we spoke,” says Villanelle. “Once or twice. And I did have ways of keeping tabs on you.”

“What? No, you know what – I really don’t want to know.”

“What is it that keeps you so closed off?” Villanelle asks. Her hand – her _fucking_ hand – has found its way over to Eve again, this time resting almost innocently on her thigh. She adopts a hurt expression, pouty lips and puppy-dog eyes. “Is it something I did?”

Eve... is not. So, she signals and veers right onto the next exit. “You know, I am trying to drive here,” she says.

“I can drive if you would prefer,” says Villanelle. “I am _extremely_ good at multitasking.”

They pull into a gas station parking lot, Eve bringing the car to a stop in front of an open pump. “We need gas,” she says, cutting the engine and getting out of the car.

Villanelle, who is shaping up to be surprisingly predictable, gets out too. She comes around to the other side of the car as Eve puts her credit card in the machine and cranks open the gas tank, leaning against the driver’s side door.

“Is it because you stabbed me?” she asks.

“No. No, Villanelle, not everything is about that.”

“Is it because you are still here, talking to me and driving me across America, even though you know I am not a good person?”

“You’re not a bad person,” says Eve, almost on a reflex. “And no.”

“You might not think I am _bad_ ,” says Villanelle, “but you do not think I am _good_ , either.”

Eve turns to her. “I do think you’re a good person,” she says. “I just think you do bad things sometimes.” The gas pump clicks off and she turns back to tend to it.

“Is it because you like me and you don’t know what that says about you?” Villanelle asks.

Eve doesn’t answer.

“Is it because you are attracted to me and that is terrifying to you?”

Eve doesn’t answer.

“Is it because,” Villanelle moves to stand in the narrow space between Eve and the car, angles her body so Eve is forced to stand face-to-face with her, forced to meet her eyes – _catlike, wide but alert_ , “you want to kiss me?”

Villanelle moves away, goes back to leaning on the car just as quickly as she came. Eve misses the feel of her body heat that close.

“Is it because you wanted to kiss me, that time in Paris, but you stabbed me instead? Because violence was easier than coming to terms with the fact that you had _feelings_ for someone you’d been trying so hard to hate?” 

And, God, if Villanelle doesn’t look a little crazy right now. Her face is smooth stone, absolutely impassive. Eve could not get a read on her, assign her an emotion if she tried.

“Is it because you think you might love me?” asks Villanelle. “More than your husband, even?”

Eve reels back and punches her right in the nose.

*

Eve doesn’t apologize for nearly four hours. It‘s some kind of record for her, she thinks. One born purely of circumstance, but a record nonetheless. 

First there is the problem at hand. Eve has to contain her emotions in a neat little space behind her sternum, swallow down the anger she feels towards Villanelle for what she said and the guilt of hitting her. The other gas station patrons are taking notice now; an argument between two women is nothing, but a full blow to the face is quite another. A spectacle, if you will. Essentially, Eve just slams the gas nozzle back in place, cranks the cap back on her tank, and gets in the car. She just assumes Villanelle is smart enough to do the same before Eve gets the car in drive. 

They have _hours_ left to go, after all. 

Then there is the hotel – Eve checking them into their room (yes, one) and blocking Villanelle and her possibly-broken nose from view (it’s still dripping blood, somehow). The mad rush up to their room (third floor) and tossing of the suitcases onto one of the twin beds (yes, two). The interminable wait for Villanelle to finish her shower, during which Eve is forced to relive the evening in excruciating detail – Villanelle spent the whole rest of the ride to the hotel in silence, and in a cycle of sniff-wince-dab, all the while stealing glances between Eve and her own blood dripping onto her hands. She kept touching her face, too, fingertips prodding at her tender nose and the bright bruises blooming there. 

Finally, it is Eve’s turn in the shower. Her turn to step into the still-damp bathroom, smelling of Villanelle in some especially potent and nearly tangible way. Her turn to let the water run while she strips naked, step over the towel Villanelle has left on the floor, folded in two as a makeshift bathmat, and into the shower, walls already heavy with condensation and smelling somehow more like Villanelle. 

When Eve comes out, Villanelle is waiting on one of the beds – the one without the bags on it. She is dressed in some velvet monstrosity of a pajama top with sleep pants to match. She’s lying on her back, one ankle kicked over the bent knee of her other leg, scrolling through something on her phone. Eve can hear the sounds of a video or something playing, the sound tinny with distance. Villanelle looks up when Eve throws her wet towel down at the foot of the bed.

“Look,” Eve says. “I shouldn’t have hit you, and I’m really sorry, but there are just some things you do not say to me. Including _anything_ about Niko, okay?”

Villanelle has the decency to look chagrined. Barely.

“Even if it is true?” she says.

“Yes.”

Villanelle sighs. “I suppose I can do that.” She looks at Eve, “For you.”

“What you said about me being violent,” Eve says. She’s not sure how to continue. “I’m not – you know I’m not really a violent person, right? I don’t _like_ hurting people.”

“Eve,” Villanelle says. She lets her phone fall blindly to the nightstand, clattering as it settles, and rolls to her side to look at Eve even more directly. “I want you to do terrible things to me. Punching me in the face is relatively low on the totem pole compared to some of them.

And, oh, if that doesn’t send a lightning bolt down the line of Eve’s stomach. She feels, yet again, caught off guard and – though she would _never_ admit it to Villanelle – a little turned on.

“Now, can we please go to sleep?” asks Villanelle. “My face fucking hurts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I lived in the good old United States of America my whole life? Yes.
> 
> Have I lived and/or visited at least 50% of them? Also yes.
> 
> Do I have ANY sense of direction or how long it takes to get from place to place on the interstates? Absolutely not.
> 
>  
> 
> Please enjoy my attempts in future chapters to improvise by adding section breaks whenever our girls are going to a new location instead of trying to describe exactly _how_ they get there. :)


	3. she's back to the bathroom for one more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My personal deadline for this chapter was next Sunday, but 2x05 hit me SO hard, I wrote about half of this in a frenzied haze right after the episode...4000+ words felt like nothing! Honestly, I haven't had the writing bug hit me this hard in who knows how long. This season is fucking killing me and I honestly have no idea how it's going to end.
> 
> Again, thank you all for your kind words. Every time I get a notification that someone's commented on this fic, I get a little emotional. This is probably the easiest thing I've ever written - the whole thing is just flowing out of me and I'm having the time of my life writing V and Eve!! Who knew writing could be so fun?
> 
> P.S. Canonically, Villanelle’s birthday is March 12, but we all know there is _no way_ that girl is a Pisces. Let’s all just suspend our disbelief together, shall we?
> 
>  
> 
> Anyway - enough from me. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!
> 
> Chapter title from "Pavlove" by Fall Out Boy (BEST song of all time)

They are crawling along through the construction traffic on I-71 when Villanelle asks, again, “So where exactly are we going?”

Eve has yet to come up with a good answer since the last time she asked.

“Do you have a destination in mind?” Villanelle continues. “Somewhere you want to visit? A general direction? I am looking for _anything_ , Eve. Any hint at all.”

“Like I told you, oh I don’t know, less than a week ago? I don’t have a route or destination or anything in mind. I’m just,” she flicks her wrist, gestures at the road ahead of them, “going.”

Several minutes pass, Eve preoccupied with watching the traffic all around them, drivers hot and angry in the midday sun. For her part, she actually feels pretty calm – or, she was, until Villanelle started up with whatever this is. Still, it’s actually a nice day out. The A/C in their rental car is blasting ice-cold air that chills Eve nearly down to the bone, and the radio is playing a mix of current American pop and eighties songs that she vaguely remembers the words to.

“Eve,” says Villanelle, after a time. “What is your star sign?”

“No clue.” Eve is hardly ashamed to admit she knows nothing about the zodiac. Well, apart from the namesake serial killer.

“Because all this time, I thought maybe you were a Capricorn, but now I am leaning heavily towards Virgo.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” asks Eve. “What’s _your_ sign?”

“I,” says Villanelle, with the air of someone who is immensely proud of themselves for knowing more than you do, “am an Aries. With a Scorpio rising and Venus in Leo.”

“Very cool,” says Eve.

Then, “I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

Villanelle sighs. “I’ll buy you a book or something,” she says.

*

They stop for a few days in Indianapolis, staying in a tall glassy-blue building with a view of downtown. Ostensibly, they are lying low to rest – “Driving is exhausting,” Eve had said – while in reality, Eve is just trying to figure out where the hell she is going, what she wants out of this insane road trip. Because Villanelle was right. As she usually is. Eve doesn’t have anything in mind – not a destination, a vague line traced across her mental map of the United States, not even a goddamn tourist trap. Her mind is nothing more than a blank.

Well. That may be putting it too simplistically. The thing is, Eve’s been thinking quite a bit. About her job and the remnants of her marriage – as if there’s anything left – and, most annoyingly omnipresent, about Villanelle.

Eve had figured that, by this point in her life, she had a pretty good handle on her sense of self. _Who are you?_ someone might ask. _What makes you tick?_ Before, the easy answer had always been her job. Eve had loved working for MI5 and, later, the shadier groups of friends and strangers tasked with chasing Villanelle and other psychopathic women just like her. Well, maybe not _exactly_ like her. But similar enough, as far as Carolyn was concerned.

Or, maybe, she would have answered that Niko was her reason for living. They didn’t have children, had never wanted them, so Niko was the first and last and entirety of Eve’s immediate family. And that had been enough. _He_ had been enough. It had been simple, perfect, all she could have imagined to wake up every morning next to someone who loved her unconditionally.

It had been all that and more for her to feel the same about him.

But now, Eve’s life had turned on its head, over and over, like getting trapped in a riptide, and she wasn’t sure any longer what the answer to that question was. _Who am I?_ It had been a constant refrain in her head while driving the past few weeks as they sped down miles and miles of pavement, Villanelle a constant presence at her right.

All those things Villanelle had said at the gas station – Eve would never admit it, but they had stuck in her skin like fiberglass, painful and itchy and impossible to remove. 

Villanelle, incessant questions notwithstanding, seemed completely at peace with just being along for the ride. She barely spoke in the car, and when she did it was only to ask Eve to stop for food or a bathroom or a moment to stretch her legs. Eve wonders, suddenly if she’s missed out on a thousand opportunities for conversation, for a chance to actually get to know this woman she’s been chasing for so long.

“I want to know more about you,” she says suddenly, too wrapped up in her own thoughts to filter them appropriately.

Villanelle is sitting near the large window that encompasses one entire wall of their room, lounging in a horridly uncomfortable-looking armchair and sipping something from a mug. She looks up instantly when Eve speaks, like she’s been waiting for her to say something.

“Oh?” she says, inflection turning it into a question.

“I want to know – ” Eve wrings her hands, scoots to sit at the end of the bed and face Villanelle, “what makes you tick, I guess.”

“Because you think about me _all the time_?” Villanelle asks, turning the end of the sentence into a loose imitation of Eve’s own voice, of that time they spoke in Paris.

Eve is too tired to even attempt to lie anymore. “Yeah.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

 _Start with something easy_ , Eve thinks. “What’s your favorite food?”

“Mm,” Villanelle hums. “Nothing quite compares to a proper croque-madame, but I am partial to anything fried.”

“Like chicken?”

Villanelle looks horrified. “Well, _sure_ , I suppose. But there are so many other, better options out there, darling Eve.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Eve touches her middle three fingertips to the center of her forehead. “I’m just a little tired, not thinking straight.”

“When are you ever?” Villanelle asks with a quirk to her lips.

“What?”

“Just a little joke,” says Villanelle. “Don’t worry about it.”

She stares down into her mug, swirls the dregs around a little. “What else do you want to ask me?”

“What was your childhood like?” Eve asks. It’s a question she really is curious to know the answer to, though one she doesn’t think Villanelle will want to answer.

True to form, Villanelle shakes her head and says, mildly, “Next question.”

“Do you enjoy your job?” Eve tries next. “Do you _like_ killing people?”

“Hm, sometimes. It depends on how bad of a person they are.” Villanelle looks up again. “And whether I have a… personal connection.”

Eve is beginning to feel a little hot and bothered, the hotel air conditioning just this side of not enough. She has the feeling, yet again, that their conversation has taken on a new direction, a detour toward all the things Villanelle really wants her to ask, and all the things Eve is too shy to say.

“Do you want to take a walk?” asks Villanelle.

Eve meets her eyes warily. “Why?”

Villanelle shrugs. “Maybe it will be easier for you to talk to me if we do not have to look at each other.”

*

They end up walking along the canal, evidently a focal point of the city. There are other people milling about, families and businessmen alike; it is a warm day, sunny. Eve is only in a short-sleeved shirt and the breeze off the brackish water is cool and ticklish on her bare arms.

“So what do you really want to ask me?” Villanelle asks.

“I don’t know if I can say it,” says Eve. “Not all of it, at least. It’s too… ” Personal? No, that’s not the right word. Eve sighs. “It’s just stupid.”

“Eve, I am sure it’s not. Nothing you could say to me would be stupid.”

That makes Eve laugh a little, bump her bare arm against Villanelle’s elbow. “Now I know you’re lying,” she says. “I say stupid shit all the time.”

She can see Villanelle smile a little in her peripheral vision. It’s good to see she has some emotions, at least sometimes. At least when it comes to Eve.

Without breaking her stride, Villanelle ghosts a finger down Eve’s arm, leaving goosebumps in her wake. “Ask me,” she says quietly. “And then you can run away if it’s really bad.”

Eve gathers her courage up in both hands, fights down the nerves that rise up like bile in her throat.

“Did you mean it?” she asks. “When you said you… masturbate about me?” And there it is, the hard part done, the difficult words out. “Were you being serious or were you just trying to hit a nerve?”

She’d been expecting Villanelle to laugh at her. She doesn’t. Instead, as Eve chances a glance over her left shoulder, she wrinkles her brow, transforming herself into the poster child for delighted bemusement. Oh. She hadn't been expecting that from Eve.

“What a question, Eve!”

“Did you – ” and here Eve has to be brave again. “Do you really think about me that way?”

“Of course I do,” says Villanelle, and it is sincere in a way that can’t be faked. “I would not lie to you, not about that.”

“So you are… sexually attracted to me.” It isn’t really a question.

“Hm, yes,” says Villanelle, drawing one syllable out into far too many.

“Oh.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious, I guess.” Eve’s stomach flutters strangely, her pulse angry like a swarm of bees. “No one’s ever really said something like that to me before, at least not to my face.”

“Well,” says Villanelle. “You know me, I like to speak my mind.”

And, no. Eve doesn’t know her, not really. But somehow, she can’t bring herself to argue.

*

“If you’re so hung up on where we’re going next, why don’t _you_ pick the route?”

It is later in the day, 9 o’clock sunset just starting to settle in over the horizon. They are packing up to get back on the road in the morning, Villanelle folding each item of clothing into careful squares, Eve just sort of throwing things into her suitcase and hoping it all fits.

“Okay,” says Villanelle. She smiles. “Looks like we’re going to Alaska, then.”

“Oh, uh. Sure. Sounds great.” Eve does her best not to mentally calculate how long that will take them.

“I am joking with you, Eve.” Villanelle leans across the bed so she can duck her head beneath the curtain of hair hanging over Eve’s face, separating them. “It is too close to Russia. Makes me uncomfortable.” She winks and straightens back up into a standing position.

“Then where _do_ you want to go?” Eve asks. “If we could go anywhere within the continental United States,” she rushes to clarify. God forbid Villanelle force her onto a plane headed for South America. Or Antarctica.

“Hollywood,” Villanelle says simply. Honestly. 

“Why?”

She wrinkles her nose. It is, unfortunately, adorable. “Kind of the quintessential American experience, is it not? That’s where _stars_ are born.”

So, the next morning finds them on the road west, cutting a belt-like path through Illinois. Villanelle wants to make it to Kansas by the end of the day, for some indiscernible reason. Eve’s not really a fast driver, nor does she have the endurance for eight hours of driving in one day, so she’s a little doubtful they’ll actually make it there. But Villanelle is determined. As per usual.

“Why don’t you drive, then?” Eve asks, exasperatedly, by the third or fourth time Villanelle has let out a huge, martyrlike sigh. “If this is _so_ tedious for you.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

It is clearly not fine.

By the time the morning sun has reached its zenith, Villanelle has resorted to fiddling with the handle of the passenger-side glove compartment. She’s a restless ball of energy, changing positions in her seat every five minutes or so – cross-legged, feet on the dashboard, head against the window, head tipped back on the headrest so the long, soft line of her neck is stretched to obscene lengths. She heaves yet another sigh, then announces, “I’m boooored.”

“Wow, I am so sorry that me going ten over the speed limit isn’t fast enough for you,” says Eve. She isn’t annoyed, not really, but there is a curious burn starting in the place behind her sternum, something that seems portentous of something coming to a head.

They pass a sign announcing that it is only 81 miles to St. Louis. Villanelle sits up straight in her seat. “Eve, Eve,” she says.

“What?”

“Let me drive. Please.”

“Uh,” says Eve. She’s not sure how to tell Villanelle that she isn’t crazy about putting the fate of this rental car in her hands.

“St. Louis is where that arch thing is, yes?” Villanelle asks, pronouncing _St. Louis_ in a lilting French accent that sounds far less pretentious than it ought to.

“Yes?”

“I want to go there,” says Villanelle, excitement leaking from her every pore. “Let me drive us there, at least.”

And what is Eve supposed to do when Villanelle is acting this giddy about something? Tell her no? 

“What’s so special about the St. Louis Arch?” asks Eve after they’ve stopped and refilled the gas tank, Villanelle jumping into the driver’s seat almost as soon as Eve was out of the car. 

“It is _big_ ,” says Villanelle, eyes opening comically wide. “Have you ever been?”

“Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

“Probably not then,” Villanelle says, matter-of-factly. “You would remember.”

Eve feels the need to explain herself, for some reason. “I mean, I spent most of my time here on the East Coast. Not much opportunity to drive from Connecticut to St. Louis. It’s not really a day trip.”

Villanelle switches lanes to pass a rusting minivan going at least twenty below the speed limit. “You don’t need to explain yourself, Eve,” she says.

To Eve’s great surprise, it turns out Villanelle is an excellent driver. Eve, unfortunately, is one of those individuals cursed with carsickness in the extreme. Unless she’s the one driving, she spends most of her time in moving vehicles fighting the urge to vomit. She had been so unwilling to let Villanelle take the wheel for this very reason – Eve is quickly learning she will do anything to avoid showing weakness in front of Villanelle – but it seems she was overly cautious for no reason. 

They are making good time with Villanelle at the wheel. Careless as she might be in other aspects of life, murderous tendencies included, she is a sure and confident driver, maintaining an even speed and keeping several car lengths between them and other drivers. Before Eve knows it, they are pulling off on an exit and following the signs for the Arch. 

Villanelle pulls into a spot in the underground parking garage between two oversized pickup trucks. When they get out of the car, Eve laughs at how tiny their rental car looks between the trucks. Villanelle sees what she’s looking at and gives a little laugh of her own, a free and clear sound that gives Eve pause. She’s never heard Villanelle truly laugh before.

Though it is a hot day outside, sun blinding on the highway all morning, the parking garage is cool and dark as a cave in the way only parking garages can be, thick with the smell of car oil and stale air. When they get to the park beneath the arch, Eve heads immediately toward a patch of unoccupied grass and sits down. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes, breathes in the smells of summer and lets herself feel truly relaxed for a moment.

Villanelle, who had been slightly behind her the whole walk here, finally catches up. Eve hears her scoff and opens her eyes. “What?” she asks.

“It is so much smaller than I thought,” Villanelle says. “Sort of anticlimactic, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s nice,” says Eve. She has to look all the way up, head resting on her shoulders, to see Villanelle. The arch has covered them both in a soft blanket of shadow, the sun just starting to set behind Villanelle. The light settles around her head like a halo, illuminated through the blond pieces of hair that have fallen out of her bun.

Villanelle huffs again and flops down on to the grass beside Eve. She is wearing all white today, tailored jeans and a flowy blouse. Eve worries, briefly, about whether the damp grass will leave stains on her pants.

“What were you expecting?” asks Eve.

“Something better,” Villanelle replies.

Eve laughs. This close, she can smell the sun on Villanelle’s skin, her perfume oxidizing in the heat and mixing with her sweat in an earthy kind of scent. “Do you want to go up in the arch?” she asks.

Villanelle looks at her, eyes wide. “No!”

*

After the disappointment of the day, Villanelle doesn’t even ask if she can drive. She just slides sullenly into the passenger seat and mopes as Eve navigates them to Jefferson City to find a hotel for the night. Eve is finding the whole situation immensely funny.

“I still don’t know what you expected,” she says. “It’s not like it’s the Eiffel Tower or anything.”

“It is _supposed_ to be this structural masterpiece, a gateway to the west.” It is remarkable how much Villanelle is able to sound like a child discovering that Santa Claus isn’t real. Eve almost feels bad for her.

“I thought it was pretty cool.”

“Well, good for you, Eve.” 

Villanelle rests her head against the window and pretends to sleep for the rest of the drive.

They stop for the night at a local hotel just outside of the city, near Apache Flats, more of a bed and breakfast than anything else. It’s quiet, just far enough away from the chaos of downtown to feel almost secluded. The sun set while they were driving and the night air is cool as they unload their suitcases and check in. 

Once inside, the carpet muffles their footsteps so that Eve feels the irrepressible need to make some kind of noise, scuff her feet every few steps, anything so she doesn’t become a ghost. Their room is on the second floor, at the end of the hall. As they get closer, the day starts to catch up with Eve and she feels at once immensely tired.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” asks Villanelle, just as Eve says, “I think I’m going to take a shower.”

“Oh.” The earnestly hopeful look slides off of Villanelle’s face like melted ice cream on hot pavement.

“We can watch something after I clean up,” says Eve. Villanelle looks disappointed, almost sad, and she feels like the worst person in the world.

“No, it is fine.”

“The next hotel then,” says Eve. Villanelle gives her a small smile in reply.

“Sure.”

The tub is new, but the pipes are old, so it takes several minutes for the water to heat up. While she waits, Eve undresses slowly, then sits with her back to the cabinet below the sink, towel draped loosely over her shoulders. She knows, given enough time, she could nod off like this. 

Once the water has warmed sufficiently, Eve steps into the shower and begins to soap up her hair with one of the little travel-size bottles of shampoo provided to them. She has become used to smelling like some new variation of floral-earthy-clean laundry scents over the past few weeks with each hotel they stay at. She allows her eyes to slip closed while she lets the pulse of the water rinse the suds out. When she feels herself start to sway a little, she opens them again and sets about cleaning the rest of her body.

After she finishes washing herself, Eve lets herself slide down to the floor of the tub and sit cross-legged. The creaky showerhead remained immovable, no matter how much she fiddled with it, so Eve’s back is pressed up against the far wall of the shower, the spray just hitting her knees. She is luxuriating in the soft brush of warm water like this when she hears a knock and then the soft _shush_ of the bathroom door opening.

“Eve?” asks Villanelle. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, of course,” says Eve without hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. You’ve just been in here a long time.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s just so warm in here and the water feels fantastic.” Eve thinks she could die like this, enveloped in sweet-chlorine-scented shower steam.

Villanelle’s voice comes from much closer, just outside the shower curtain when she speaks next. “May I join you?” She sounds almost hesitant. Eve is suddenly wide-awake and on high alert.

“What? No!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t look,” says Villanelle. “I’m coming in.”

“Hold on. Wait, wait.” Eve scrambles for a second, manages to draw her knees up to her chest just as the shower curtain opens enough to let Villanelle in. Somehow, in the space of maybe thirty seconds, she’s already taken off her clothes, and Eve quickly averts her eyes from her naked body.

Villanelle seats herself on the other side of the spray, an awkward position that gives her mere inches of room if she doesn’t want to whack her spine on the bathtub faucet. Through the steam and water, Eve can’t see much, but her eyes seem to have a mind of their own and keep darting over to the vague Villanelle-shaped person on the other side of the wall of water.

“What is wrong, Eve?” Villanelle asks her. “When you were in here so long, I worried you might be crying.

“I’m not _crying_ ,” says Eve. “I’m just relaxing a little. I’ve been stressed.”

“Because of me.” It is not a question, but Villanelle’s left eyebrow curves upward just the tiniest bit, as if it were.

Eve laughs. “It’s always you,” she says. “Always.”

She shakes her head. “But not entirely. I’m just confused about a lot of things in my life at the moment.”

It is hot and close in the confines of the shower. Villanelle has mimicked Eve’s posture, knees tucked to her chest, but they are still inches from touching. The warmth that was so comforting to Eve just minutes ago has become stifling.

“Let me look at you,” says Villanelle. The lines of her face have softened slightly, expression taking on an almost gentle appearance. “Please.”

Eve knows Villanelle has seen her body before, at least partially. But the kitchen had been dim and Eve hadn’t had to see Villanelle watching her. And she had been wearing underwear. 

But Villanelle is testing Eve at the moment, or else trying to figure something out, trying to unlock one more tiny piece of the Eve-shaped puzzle she seems so hell bent on solving. It is, Eve thinks, a mirror image of the Villanelle-shaped puzzle she herself is trying to solve. 

So, slowly, in a series of glacier-like movements, Eve lets go of her knees and lets them fall to either side until she is sitting criss-cross-applesauce style – at least, as much as she is able to in the narrow space. 

It is unbearable, being on display like this. Eve knows she has aged well, compared to some, but she is acutely aware at this moment of all the years she has been alive on this earth. She is acutely aware of all the places her body is wrong. All the places she is so unlike Villanelle.

And yet, when she gathers the courage to look up, Villanelle is still there, meeting her gaze, her eyes not having shifted downward in the slightest. The fact makes Eve’s heart clench fist-like in her chest.

“Are you okay?” she asks. Eve nods. 

“May I look?”

It is a slower decision this time, but Eve eventually nods again. Villanelle holds her gaze for a moment longer, as if to make sure, and then looks down. 

She certainly takes her time about it. Eve feels raw, open, a chicken carcass ready to be stuffed and roasted. Villanelle looks wonderingly at all the bits of Eve that are on display, eyes alight with curiosity and pupils darkened with some strange hunger. It’s hard to track another person’s gaze precisely, impossible to know exactly where Villanelle is looking at any given moment, but Eve can still feel it like a shock of static electricity when her eyes rest on her neck, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, and then further downward.

“You are beautiful,” Villanelle breathes. “I have never been able to look at all of someone like this before.”

Eve laughs nervously. She wants desperately to cover herself up again, and her hands twitch where they are resting on her thighs. Villanelle looks, again, into her eyes. She always has such a deep gaze, like she can see far more of Eve than what’s on the surface. 

“You know, it is not a sin to love someone,” she says. 

“Yeah, but adultery is,” says Eve. Her voice comes out so much stronger, calmer than she’d expected, and it surprises her. “And coveting someone you can’t have.”

“What makes you think you can’t have me?” Villanelle looks amused, smiling in a genuinely soft way. It’s an expression Eve has never seen on her before. 

“Because I’m still married, technically. And because I know what happens to the people you love.”

“What happens to them?” Villanelle repeats.

“Nadia. Anna. I’m sure there have been others. You love them to death, Villanelle. I don’t want that to happen to me. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

Villanelle flinches at the mention of Nadia. Or Anna, it’s hard to tell which. The soft look wanes, but does not disappear entirely.

“You are different,” she says. “I have never met anyone like you, Eve.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“Because the others,” Villanelle smiles, shakes her head, “would have never been having this conversation with me in the first place.”

“Are you going to hit me again?” she asks. 

Eve is taken aback. “What, right now?” Trying to follow one of Villanelle’s trains of thought is almost enough to give her whiplash. “No, of course not. Why would I do that?”

Villanelle grins cheekily. “Are you going to stab me?”

“What are you talking about? No. Believe it or not, I’m actually doing my best not to hurt you anymore.” 

“Do you promise?” Villanelle asks. “Even if I did something you might not like?”

Eve is, at this point, thoroughly confused. She’s given up on trying to unravel Villanelle’s questions. Maybe it’s better, she thinks, to just go along with them.

“Yes, even then,” she says. “I promise.”

“Good,” says Villanelle. “Because my nose has just healed and I don’t want you to fuck it up again.”

Then she reaches out and cups a damp hand around the curve of Eve’s jaw, meeting her eyes and watching her, unblinking, as she moves in closer and closer still. It is so, so unbearably slow. Eve is beginning to go cross-eyed trying to hold Villanelle’s gaze and her heart is pounding in a way that feels unhealthy. There is a question on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t get it out, the words shriveling and dying out like ash on her tongue.

Villanelle places her thumb – the one not currently stroking back and forth on Eve’s jawbone – on Eve’s bottom lip, traces the outline of it with her fingertip. “Beautiful,” she says.

And then she kisses her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me @ myself: please just let them kiss and be happy
> 
> My last two braincells, who are responsible for actually writing stuff: haha no, we need more angst
> 
> (But really, could it get any more angsty than the actual show?)
> 
>  
> 
> More soon! Come find me on tumblr @boxedblondes if you want to talk and/or scream :)


	4. there's always static on tv in this hotel room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gays... you are welcome.
> 
> Chapter title from "Over My Head" by Echosmith

When Eve was fifteen, she had a crush on a boy named David. He was tall, lean and lanky in the way all teenage boys that age are. They had one class together, English, and it was the best few hours of her week. Eve sat in the middle of the classroom, in an assigned seat – if it were up to her, she would’ve been right at the front where she could actually hear the lesson instead of listening to her classmates gossip and tell dirty jokes – one seat behind and to the left of David.

He was a good student, or at least, good at pretending to be one. Eve used to get a rush out of just watching him during a lesson, dark, curly head bent over a notebook, slowly and methodically copying down notes and figures.

At the time, that’s what she thought love was – infatuation and some strange heat that prickled in her cheeks and all along her chest when she watched him. Eve was not a shy person, but with David she found it impossible to speak. Once, she dropped her pen and he handed it back to her with a small smile. Eve had whispered a “thank you” and spent the rest of the day beating herself up for looking so stupid in front of him, for not taking the opportunity to strike up a conversation.

It wasn't until late November that Eve had an opportunity to speak to him again. The weather had turned cool and nippy, the air just starting to smell like snow. Eve, in a fight with her parents and tired of taking the bus two-and-a-half blocks to and from school each day, had taken it upon herself to walk instead, luxuriating in the sense of reckless freedom it brought her.

It was on one of these days, afternoon turning lazily over into evening, that Eve was startled from her thoughts by a tap on the shoulder. She whirled around, heart pounding even as she recognized the boy behind her. It was David.

“Oh,” Eve said dumbly. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he said. “Are you walking home?”

“Yeah, I decided really didn’t want to ride the bus unless I have to.”

David laughed a little at that, a deep chuckle far below the normal timbre of his voice. Eve found herself starting to blush, heat rising up from her neck. This boy she was so crazy over was laughing at something she said, and it was puzzlingly, amazingly wonderful.

“You’re funny,” David said. 

Eve tucked a curl behind her ear, feeling for all the world like the female love interest in every film she’d ever seen. “Thanks,” she said shyly.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” David asked, plunging on before Eve could answer. “Can I kiss you?”

“What?” Eve was taken aback, unsure if she heard him right.

“It’s just…” David fiddled with the straps of his backpack nervously. “Some of the other guys were making fun of me ‘cause I’ve never kissed a girl before. And I thought you seemed pretty nice. We have English together, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Eve. The bottom of her stomach dropped out, a wave of hurt and shame rising up to fill the void. She should have known, she thought. She should have known.

“So?” David wheedled, raising his eyebrows. And Eve must have said “sure” or nodded or, hell, _blinked_ in the wrong way, because he leaned in and pecked her on the lips, a dry, lifeless kiss, over before she even realized what was happening. 

When David pulled back, he smiled at her. “Cool, thanks," he said. "See you around!”

He waved at her and jogged off down the sidewalk and that was it. Eve willed her wooden legs to take her home, then locked the bathroom door and cried for an hour until she was too tired to feel things like shame or disappointment anymore. 

Later, at birthday parties and sleepovers, Eve’s friends will toss around stories of their own first kisses, sharing the stories between each other like extra sticks of gum. “Have you ever kissed a boy?” they’ll ask Eve, expecting her to blush and shake her head.

When Eve replies, “Yes” instead, refusing to comment on it further, the other girls will give her a look of respect, or of wonderment and a touch of jealousy, depending on whether they’ve been lucky enough themselves to share five seconds of stale air with a boy they hardly know. Eve wishes it made her feel powerful, but it doesn’t. She’s been dreaming of her first kiss since she can remember, Disney movies and her mother’s soap operas mixing together to form a vague idea of what it will be like. An unrealistic picture and a foolish one, at that.

Eve is fifteen when she realizes that the course of her life is not something she can control, not like she wants. Life does not happen on her own terms.

* 

The spray of the shower is warm on Eve’s face, rolling in fat beads down her forehead and catching like dust at the corners of her eyes. Villanelle’s getting the brunt of it, a curtain of water streaming continuously down either side of her face, cascading into the space between them, but Eve still feels a bit like she’s drowning as Villanelle’s lips move over her own.

It is messy and wet, rivulets of water and saliva slipping between their tongues and teeth. Eve keeps forgetting to breathe and then having to draw air into her lungs in quick, gasping breaths whenever Villanelle does something new with her tongue. 

She kisses like she means it, Eve thinks, deep and sloppy in a way that does not feel unpolished but, rather, sends a wave of heat straight to her groin. 

Villanelle is ruthless, biting at Eve’s lips then soothing the sting with a swipe of her tongue, sucking Eve’s tongue into her own mouth and giving it the same treatment. Her hands keep stroking over new, previously non-erogenous parts of Eve’s body, rubbing little circles into the meat of her shoulders, cupping the side of her breasts where they meet her ribcage, smoothing over the downy hairs on Eve’s forearms. 

Eve thinks she gets it, now - why Anna and Nadia and all the rest of them fell for Villanelle. Why they were willing to risk it all, throw away their whole lives for her. Why they wound up dying for her. 

She does her best to press back, to match the chaotic rhythm Villanelle has set - teeth and lips and tongue and hands, all slick with water and steam. Eve is grateful for the cover of the shower, sure she would be sweating half to death without it. She curls a hand in Villanelle’s hair, pulls curiously at the roots there. Villanelle groans, soft and low in her throat and Eve tugs harder. 

Her other hand skims along the line of Villanelle’s body, finding her own path along her skin. She presses the fingertips of her left hand into the indentations between Villanelle’s ribs, feels the give and take of the flesh there, muscle and bone. She slides her hand lower to rest at the base of her spine, thumbing the upper line of her hipbones. 

Villanelle does not respond in any discernible way, does not gasp or moan or beg, but she does tilt her head and kiss Eve even deeper, somehow. 

Eve untangles the hand still trapped in Villanelle’s hair and skirts it down her side. She runs her thumb along the line of her ribs and then inward, toward the scar she knows is there. Villanelle _does_ make a sound, then, when she finds it, fingers pressing against the knotted scar tissue. It is another of those choked-off groans, a sound that could signal pain or pleasure or both. 

Somehow, through all of this, they are still kissing. It is as if once they’ve started they can’t stop, can’t do anything but make up for lost time and months and months of near-misses. Eve’s whole body feels like an electric wire, sparking and hissing at odd intervals. She knows without really thinking it that she could come like this, could really and truly orgasm if Villanelle were to touch her, down there, just for a moment. 

The thought startles her and she jerks back with a gasp, mouth still mere centimeters from Villanelle’s own, lips tingling like pins-and-needles in a foot that’s fallen asleep. “Stop,” she pants out. “Just give me a minute, please.”

And Villanelle does, pulls away from her swiftly, hands and mouth and all. She reaches behind her to shut off the water, now gone lukewarm. “Eve,” she says. 

Eve feels like she has a fever, limbs trembling and heart racing. She still can’t catch her breath, no matter how much she sucks down air. 

“Eve,” Villanelle says again, reaching a hand out to rest on her shoulder. “You are shaking.”

 _I’m fine_., Eve tries to say, but she really is shaking, and the words can’t make it past her chattering teeth. 

Just like that, Villanelle is gone, shower curtain yanked aside as she steps out, still dripping. Eve feels that familiar rush of shame slide down her throat in one long, molten gulp, settling heavily in her stomach. She’s done something wrong, gone too far, misread some cue, and now it’s all fucked up again. 

Eve wills her thinking brain to come back online so she can come up with an exit plan. She closes her eyes and wonders if Villanelle will at least do her the decency of letting Eve go without a fight, if she will allow her to leave with her pride still intact. 

And then a heavy weight falls over her shoulders, warm and clean-smelling. “Sorry,” Villanelle says. “There were no towels in the bathroom cabinets for some reason. I had to get one from the room.”

Eve’s eyes snap open, sound and color returning to her once more. Villanelle is draping another towel over the first, rubbing them gently along Eve’s back. 

“You should probably dry your own hair,” she says. “I’m not the best with curls.”

The shame is slowly slipping away from Eve, leaving in its place a mishmash of feelings - confusion, relief, fondness. She is finding it hard to believe Villanelle is still here. Moreover, that she’s drying Eve off because she was cold. To her complete dismay, she begins to cry. 

Villanelle’s slow towel-rubbing ceases entirely. “Eve?”

Eve can’t speak. The exhaustion from earlier is back, rushing over her in a wave, and the complete emotional whirlwind of the last few minutes leaves her entirely unable to make much sense of what’s going on.

Villanelle is crouching in front of her now, arms over the lip of the tub and hands coming up to hold Eve’s face, wipe the tears away from where they’re gathering in pools at the corners of her eyes. 

“Sorry,” Eve says, the word shaky and weak-sounding. “I don’t know what’s going on with me. I’m just so...” She doesn’t have the words to describe it. 

Villanelle seems to understand anyway. “It is alright,” she says. “You are okay, Eve. It is all going to be okay.”

Eve nods through the tears, continues to tremble with the force of them. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Villanelle says, bundling her up and helping her to stand. 

They hobble, slowly, to the bed. Villanelle turns down the sheets and tucks Eve in, towels and all, then comes around to the other side and pulls the blanket up over herself. 

She turns towards Eve so they are face-to-face, reaching out to tuck a damp piece of hair behind her ear from where it’s plastered to her cheek. “Are you okay?” she asks. 

Villanelle’s eyes are wide and kind, ringed in concern and something Eve identifies, almost unbelievingly, as fondness. 

“I’m fine,” says Eve. She laughs. “For once in my life, I am completely fine.”

Villanelle leans over to kiss her on the forehead, a soft touch of her lips to Eve’s skin. She lingers for a moment, then scoots back, maneuvering the two of them until Eve is lying on her other side, Villanelle curling up behind her - knees tucked behind Eve’s, chin hooked loosely over her shoulder. 

They fall asleep like that, Eve lulled down and down and down by the soft sound of Villanelle’s breathing in her ear and the warm press of her arm around her waist.

*

In the morning, they are on the road again. Waking up had been an ordeal, Eve having to swim her way up and out of the deepest sleep she’s had in months. When she’d woken up fully, she had worried, for a moment, that Villanelle would have packed her bags and left, or else decided she actually didn’t feel _that way_ about Eve.

Maybe it had just been a dream, a product of Eve’s sleep-addled brain. Or maybe it really had happened, and now they would spend the next few days in an awkward silence, trapped in their tiny rental car and pretending it hadn’t. Eve wasn’t quite sure which was worse.

And yet, Villanelle had still been there when she woke up, blinking blearily into the weak morning sun. She was sitting up, back to the headboard, on the other side of the bed, one hand tracing patterns in Eve’s hair and the other tapping out a message to someone on her phone.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she says once she realizes Eve is awake. “I told you you should have dried your own hair.”

And indeed, Eve’s hair has been left to its own devices overnight, left to air dry and muss itself into a tangled mess against the pillows. Her head itself feels almost stuffy, full of hot air and wisps of memories that float in front of her eyes like pieces of dust across her vision – warm water beating an erratic pattern against her forehead, dripping like hot blood into her eyes; Villanelle kissing her way from one side of Eve’s mouth to the other, so slowly Eve thought she might die; the feel of her hand ghosting along Eve’s shoulder blades. They hit her like a wave, pulse after pulse of warmth punching her straight in the gut.

_God._

“I don’t want to rush you,” says Villanelle. “You look so peaceful when you’re sleeping. But our checkout time is in an hour, so you might want to get up soon.”

Eve sits up too fast and gives herself a headrush. Villanelle places a hand against her back to steady her. “Maybe not that soon,” she laughs.

They decide to get a head start on the highway before breakfast, electing to stop somewhere along the way. Villanelle takes the driver’s side without discussion, opening the passenger door for Eve on her way around the car.

“Uh, thanks,” says Eve. “You don’t need to baby me, though. I’m tired, not dying.”

Villanelle slides into the driver’s seat and looks over at her, unamused. “It’s called chivalry, Eve. Manners? Maybe you haven’t heard of them.”

“I’m familiar with relationship etiquette,” says Eve, just barely stuttering over the word _relationship._ “It’s just strange, coming from you. No offense.”

“None taken.” Villanelle turns halfway around in her seat to look over her right shoulder as she puts the car in reverse. Eve finds herself envious of the smooth, almost effortless way she backs out of the spot and navigates out of the parking lot.

They merge onto the highway, bound for I-70, and Villanelle slides a hand across the gearshift to wrap, warm and firm, around Eve’s. “I like taking care of you,” she says simply, eyes never leaving the road ahead of them. “It is not a burden.”

For the second time in less than 24 hours, Eve feels tears begin to prick at the corner of her eyes, saltwater rising up in her throat. She squeezes Villanelle’s hand a little in reponse.

“Thank you,” she says.

*

Halfway across Kansas, Villanelle groans.

“How is this state so much _longer_ than Pennsylvania?” she asks, annoyance turning the words whiny and almost childlike.

Eve laughs at her, wide awake now with the day stretching out long and winding on either side of them. “I told you,” she says, “it gets way worse.”

Villanelle rolls her eyes behind her sunglasses, monstrously oversized things that make her look like some exotic bug. “Don’t act so high-and-mighty, Eve. It doesn’t suit you.”

And something about the day makes Eve feel brave. Maybe it’s the technicolor blur of blue sky and purple wildflowers outside the window as they speed by, birds rising up at odd intervals from the golden fields of wheat along the side of the highway. Or maybe it’s the memory of the night before – of she and Villanelle in the shower and then afterward, Eve cold and tired and emotionally wrung-out, shakes subsiding as Villanelle held her close to her chest, the warmth of her body heat like a pulsar star against Eve’s spine.

Whatever it is, Eve doesn’t feel like herself – or, like herself but better. Braver. Bigger and brighter and less afraid of what she wants, less afraid of chasing it down.

“How much longer?” she asks. They’ve called ahead to a hotel in Scott City, Eve figuring Villanelle wouldn’t want to drive around some small town looking for a place to stay after a full day on the road.

Villanelle glances over at the GPS. “Another two hours, it looks like.”

“Sounds good,” says Eve. “How do you feel about going on a real date later?”

If Villanelle was a different person, Eve’s sure she would have crashed the car. As it is, she swerves to the right ever so slightly. “What?” she asks, breathless.

Eve shrugs and tries her best to look casual. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says.

“You don’t need to wine and dine me,” Villanelle says. “If you want to get me into bed, all you have to do is ask.”

And now it’s Eve’s turn to be taken aback, that familiar shyness coming back to haunt her once again. “I’ll look up some restaurants anyway,” she says.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter because they get lost. By the time rush hour comes and goes, traffic swarming like wasps all around them and then dissipating just as suddenly, Eve begins to get the sense that they’ve missed a turn somewhere. “What mile marker are we at?” she asks.

“How should I know?” Villanelle says, locking eyes with a driver in a little red sports car who's trying to pass her.

Eve turns to look out the window, waiting to catch a glimpse of one of the little green signs between the thinning crush of glinting, gleaming cars. The next exit sign rushes by. “Shit,” Eve says. “What exit were we supposed to take?”

“127, I think.”

Fuck. “Well, we’re almost to Colorado," Eve says, "so I think it’s safe to say we missed it.” Eve picks her phone up out of the cupholder to check the map. The screen remains black no matter how many times she pushes the power button. “It’s dead,” she says.

Villanelle laughs. “God, we are a mess,” she says. Eve can’t help but laugh along with her.

They stop at the next exit and pull into the first hotel parking lot they see. Villanelle heads inside to get the room sorted out while Eve calls the Scott City hotel from the parking lot to tell them they’re not going to make it. She does her best to sound contrite, hoping maybe they’ll at least get their deposit back. Villanelle comes back out to the car just as she’s hanging up. 

“Ready?” she asks.

“Yep.”

It’s too late now to head to a restaurant and have some semblance of a “real” date, like Eve had wanted. She's feeling a little disappointed but then Villanelle catches her hand in the elevator and swings it as they walk down the hall and that, strangely, makes her feel most of the way better. That is, until they actually get to their room and Villanelle swings the door open to reveal a singular queen bed in the center of the room.

“There’s only one bed,” says Eve, dumbly.

“An accurate statement,” Villanelle replies. “Seeing as we’ve been sharing a bed this entire trip, I thought it would make more sense to stop paying for two.”

“Yes, but – ” Eve cuts herself off. She’s not sure how to explain it. It’s just – there are _implications_ to sharing a bed, sure, but even more so when it’s a conscious decision – when Villanelle went right up to the front desk and asked for a single room – and Eve isn’t sure she’s ready for the consequences.

Villanelle looks a little hesitant now, or a decent enough facsimile of hesitancy. “Is that alright?” she asks.

Eve takes a deep breath, considers her next moves. “Yeah, it’s fine," she says. "Do you want to rent a movie or something?”

The smile Villanelle gives her in return is sudden and blinding, lighting up her whole face. “Yes,” she says. “Absolutely.”

So they order shitty room service and curl up on the bed, watching _The Princess Bride_ on the little flatscreen TV hanging on the wall. Villanelle wolfs down her food, then holds Eve’s hand again while she eats her dinner more slowly, thumb stroking almost absentmindedly along Eve’s knuckles in a way that leaves her consciously holding back shivers.

When it’s over, Villanelle takes Eve’s face in her hands and kisses her soundly on the lips. “Thank you,” she says. “That was a pretty good date.”

They fall asleep not long after, Villanelle tucking Eve up against her once again, a tall, warm presence that makes Eve feel like, maybe, things are actually going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, it's almost over. How are we feeling?


	5. in any universe you are my dark star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright ladies, let's earn that M rating, shall we? Tags/triggers in the end note if you need them :)
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title from "Superposition" by Young the Giant (just... listen to it)
> 
> Alternate title: When will I learn to stop using so many italics????

Villanelle spends the drive across Colorado responding to each one of Eve’s questions – _Do you think we should get gas? Is it alright if I get out to stretch my legs for a moment? I think we can make it to Grand Junction by tonight, do you want to find a place?_ – by replying, “As you wish” in a solemn British accent that has Eve smiling and shaking her head each time. 

At least she’s not complaining about the monotony of driving through a single state for an entire day. Eve doesn’t yet have the heart to tell Villanelle that she’s probably not going to like LA traffic very much.

Eve’s aiming to get through Utah in the next day or two, stopping near Zion National Park for another few days, before making it into California by the end of the week. Eve has fond memories of Zion – hazy and yellowed with the passage of time – from visiting once in her childhood, back when her parents were still together and life seemed easy and enjoyable, rather than one endless stream of workworktaxeswork. She wants to go back now, as an adult, to see if it’s still as beautiful as she remembered. To make the memories stick, this time.

By Monday evening, sun hanging low over the icy peaks of the mountains ringing the horizon, they’ve made good headway through the state. Eve’s lower back is stiff, the foot pressed to the gas pedal twinging each time she switches to the brake, and she’s more than ready to take a break and sleep it off. Villanelle has spent the handful of hours since the last rest stop quietly reading from a thin paperback book she picked up in the gift shop.

“What’s it about?” Eve had asked.

“It’s a spy novel,” Villanelle had answered, cocking an eyebrow up toward the ceiling. “It’s _thrilling_.”

Villanelle has been sweet this whole time, since the kiss in the shower and even before that, really. Eve could almost forget that she’s a cold-blooded killer, someone recruited and shaped for violence. There’s been a hot knot of tension in Eve’s stomach all day, something she recognizes as anticipation, an elastic band ready to snap. She wonders how long this G-rated domestic bliss will last. She wonders when the other shoe will drop.

As it turns out, she doesn’t have to wonder for long.

They hardly make it into their room for the night before Villanelle is on her, backing her against a wall with her hands splayed on either side of Eve’s head. “God, let me taste you,” she says, a hairsbreadth from Eve’s mouth. Something in Eve’s chest spasms violently, her insides turning to jelly.

And this – this makes so much more sense. Villanelle can play the hopeless romantic all day long but deep down, her own version of romance is so much darker, filled with a different kind of heat. And, it turns out, Eve is okay with that.

So she lets Villanelle kiss her, slow and open-mouthed, like she wants to _destroy_ her. Eve kind of wants to be destroyed.

They kiss for several long, wonderful moments, Villanelle tonguing at Eve’s lower lip, worrying it with her teeth. Eve clasps one hand tight around Villanelle’s cheek and holds it there, keeps her locked firmly in place. Villanelle’s hands are occupied pinning Eve to the wall, so she slides a thigh up instead, nudging Eve’s legs open and apart. Eve grinds down against her leg once, twice, and again, chasing the feeling and helpless to stop. 

With Niko, the sex was never boring but it certainly wasn’t anything like this – it didn’t light this sort of fire in Eve, deep down in every part of her. It didn’t make her want to be violent, to unleash the parts of her that beg for blood, for pain, for something _deeper_. It didn’t give her this hunger, this pleasure, this heady sort of rush just from humping someone else’s leg.

It didn’t make her feel like she was being consumed by something bigger than herself.

Villanelle’s thigh pushes and pushes, muscles flexing as she forces gasps and choked little moans out of Eve that fall, unbidden, from her mouth and into Villanelle’s, where she swallows them down like a dying man.

Eve doesn’t know much about this – about how to fuck a woman – but she knows her own body, what she wants, and she knows enough to angle her body, too, so that her own thigh can slot into place beside Villanelle’s. The difference in their heights is not insignificant, but Villanelle is already bending down, crouching a little to kiss Eve, and Eve is able to push her own leg up and let Villanelle rub against her, finding her own rhythm.

They make it to the bed, eventually, Eve pushing forward just enough that Villanelle is forced to take a step back, and that momentum carries them across the room. It is a graceful dance between the two of them, their inherent chemistry letting them coordinate without even speaking.

Villanelle hits the bed first, flopping on her back as all the air in her lungs escapes with a _whoosh_. Eve crawls on top of her, taking the opportunity to be in control. To show Villanelle that she is not afraid, and that she is not sorry. To show her that she means it, this, whatever it is between the two of them.

She takes a moment to pause and breathe and to just _look_ at Villanelle. She is beautiful like this, golden hair spread out around her head, cheeks and lips flushed from kissing, from arousal. Her eyes, for once, aren’t mocking or angry or searching. She’s just… looking. Waiting to see what Eve does next. This kind of power could drive a person mad, Eve thinks.

“Villanelle,” Eve breathes, drawing each syllable out to its full length. She doesn’t say her name enough. “Villanelle.”

“Eve,” Villanelle says.

Eve bends down and cups Villanelle’s face – her perfect, shining face – in both her hands. “Villanelle,” she says again. “You are so good. You are _so_ good.”

Villanelle’s skin, flushed already, darkens further, a drop of sweat beading at the corner of one temple, the pinky blush of dilated capillaries like a rash over her otherwise perfect skin ( _high cheekbones, skin smooth and bright_ ). “Shut up,” she says, though it doesn’t sound like she means it. “Don’t – don’t talk like that.”

“Hmm?” Eve hums into the space behind her ear. “Like what?”

“Please.” Villanelle’s breath catches in her chest, lending a genuine pleading note to her request.

Oh. So she’s that far gone already. It gives a sense of pride to know that _she’s_ done that, she has made Villanelle – perfect, poised, untouchable – come apart like this. It’s almost too easy.

“Hm, baby.” Eve cups a hand around the curve of Villanelle’s skull, the hard plane of her occipital bone. “You don’t like me saying you’re _good_? You don’t want me to call you pretty, tell you how beautiful you look? You don’t want me to tell you that you deserve good things, all the best things in the world?”

She leans in close again, tucks her lips into the shell of Villanelle’s ear. “Tell me what you want then, baby.”

Villanelle’s breath hitches again, ever so slightly. And then, almost before she knows it, Eve is suddenly on her back, their positions reversed. Villanelle is perched atop her now, knees bracketing Eve’s hips, her chest moving visibly with each breath.

“I did not know you were so – ” She cuts herself off, shaking her head. The blush staining her cheeks is like watercolor paint, spreading across her skin. “You are remarkable, Eve. And so, so surprising. The things you make me _feel_ … the things I want to do to you…” she trails off.

Her hand comes up over Eve’s chest, her neck, pressing down just slightly at the junction of bone and muscle and tendon where her collarbones meet. “I wonder,” Villanelle says, dreamlike, as if she’s speaking her thoughts out loud. She pushes down with a bit more pressure, just enough that Eve can feel it, can feel her breath start to catch in her throat.

“Please,” Eve says. Just that. “Please.”

Villanelle watches her for a moment, searching for something in her eyes, and then nods slightly. She presses down with more force and just like that, Eve can no longer breathe. 

For a moment, she can relax into it, fight the panic rising up in her chest – a byproduct of her fight-or-flight response. She lets herself lie there, feel the burn and the tightness in her chest. But then, all too suddenly, Eve’s limbic system rushes to the forefront of her brain and she begins to really and truly panic, lungs spasming uselessly against the resistance from Villanelle’s hand.

Eve looks into Villanelle’s eyes, then, looks at Villanelle watching her, and wonders briefly if this is it, if this is how she dies. Her vision is starting to go black and blurry around the edges and Eve thinks to herself, maybe this isn’t such a bad way to die.

And then, all at once, the pressure on her windpipe is gone, Villanelle’s hand coming up to brush a stray tear from the corner of Eve’s eye. “You’re alright?” she asks. Eve nods.

“Good.”

Villanelle’s hand comes back up around her throat, pushing in and in until Eve can’t breathe even if she tried. It hurts and it’s frightening, an unnatural feeling that has her brain throwing up all kinds of red flags – _Danger! Help! Stop!_ Yet, when Villanelle lets go again, Eve takes in a few deep, heaving breaths and gasps out, “Again… please…”

She’s not sure how long they do this; this cat-and-mouse game, this ebb and flow, this back and forth between the two of them. Villanelle seems to have an uncanny knack for being able to tell when Eve is _this close_ to too-far-gone, just shy of passing out. Each time she pulls her hands away, she touches Eve gently – stroking over her face, her neck, smoothing back her hair – while Eve lets cool, sweet air rush back into her lungs.

Eventually, they have to stop. The time it takes for Eve to catch her breath is getting longer and longer, and she’s becoming less able to hold back her tears. “Shh, shh,” Villanelle says, combing her fingers through Eve’s hair. “You’re alright. You did so well, Eve.”

Slowly, wordlessly, Eve pulls Villanelle’s mouth back over her own, kisses her in fits and bursts as she lets her brain re-oxygenate properly. They break away and come back together in a natural rhythm, shedding their clothing one item at a time – Eve pulls Villanelle’s shirt over her head, Villanelle undoes the button on Eve’s pants, Eve peels off her own socks, Villanelle reaches around herself to unclasp her bra.

Soon they are fully naked, Villanelle sitting back on her heels to look at Eve, let her eyes roam over her body like that time in the shower. Eve looks right back, studies all the pieces of Villanelle she’s never seen before. Her eyes rest on the scar, just slightly up and to the left of Villanelle’s belly button. It hits her with a jolt to the stomach again that _she_ put that there.

Villanelle sees her looking. “Isn’t it something?” she asks.

“I’m sorry,” Eve says on reflex.

“No, I _like_ it,” Villanelle says. “It reminds me of you. I would give you one of your own, a matching scar, but I don’t if you’d like that.”

From the way Eve’s breath hitches sharply, suddenly it seems like maybe she would. Villanelle smiles. “Another time, then. I don’t want to get blood all over the hotel sheets.”

She bends to press feather-light kisses to Eve’s lips. “It looks like you’ll have some bruises anyway,” she says, working her way down Eve’s neck, kissing along the knobs of cartilage over her trachea. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” Eve says, her voice coming out high and tight. She hopes she does wake up tomorrow, black-and-blue in the shape of Villanelle’s fingerprints. Her eyes drift down and lock again on that scar. “Can I – ” she starts, but the nerves catch bright and blinding in her stomach.

“What, Eve? What do you want? I will give you anything.” Villanelle’s smile is bright and blinding, too. Almost feral. And that is all Eve needs to swallow down her anxious guts and ask.

“I want to – can I go down on you?”

“Fuck. Yes,” Villanelle almost hisses the word. “Yes, of course.”

Eve doesn’t go for it all at once. She bends, first, to Villanelle’s stomach and seals her lips there in a mimicry of a kiss, tracing the outline of her scar – raised up, smoother and denser than the surrounding skin, less forgiving – with her tongue. Villanelle exhales shakily and curves both her hands around the back of Eve’s head. “More,” she says. “More, please.” 

Back when Eve had given her this wound, had – _say the word, Eve, spit it out_ – _stabbed_ her, she had really and truly thought, just for a moment, that she was going to kill her. That she was going to end this killer’s life in the same way she had ended Bill’s – and all the others’. In the split second before the knife went in, something in Eve had shifted, spinning all her thoughts and feelings and morals into a kaleidoscope of uncertainty. When the dust settled, everything that Eve thought she knew about herself had reformed into some strange mosaic, broken pieces aligning to create a new picture.

It has taken her this long to realize this. It has taken her this long to forgive herself for not being the person she thought she was but something – some _one_ – different. It has taken her this long to understand that _different_ isn’t a dirty word.

So she forgives herself and presses that forgiveness like an apology, like a benediction, to Villanelle’s skin. She sucks a little at the scar, runs her tongue and lips and teeth over the raised edges and into the sunken crater where knife once met flesh. She makes love to it, the wound she caused, and tries to kiss away all the hurt and blood and suffering it must have caused too.

By the time Eve makes it between Villanelle’s legs, Villanelle is shaking, apparently with the effort of holding herself back. Her hands have left Eve’s hair and now make tight fists around the sheets, clenching and unclenching until Eve can see the white bone of her knuckles through her skin. 

Eve has never been with a woman before, had never even kissed one before Villanelle. But she’s spent forty-some years on this planet, a good deal of which spent having sex with men who didn’t know the first thing about the female orgasm, so she’s knowledgeable about the anatomy of it all, more than adept at figuring out what feels good. So she doesn’t let herself get nervous, doesn’t let herself start to panic and spiral. She just holds Villanelle’s thighs apart with her hands and bends down to taste her. 

And oh, the _sounds_ she makes then.

In all the time Eve has spent with Villanelle (albeit limited), she has never heard her be loud, unrestrained. Not when angry drivers cut her off on the highway. Not when she was kissing Eve in the shower. Not when Eve had her tongue buried in her scar tissue. But when Eve starts to lick at her, starts to use her mouth and her hands to find the most sensitive places of her, Villanelle is unable to hold back. She pants, heavy, like a dog in the heat, with each breath. And when Eve finds a particularly sensitive spot, she lets out a squeaky little moan from the back of her throat, a sound like she’s been surprised.

Eve reaches up a hand – the one that doesn’t currently have two fingers curling inside Villanelle – for Villanelle to clutch, which she does, holding tight enough that her fingernails make little half-moon indentations on the top of Eve’s forearm.

“Oh,” she says, still sounding so terribly, wonderfully surprised. “Eve. Oh.”

Eve’s wrist is cramping, her face slick with saliva and body fluids, but she doesn’t let up. God forbid she doesn’t let Villanelle come. She can only imagine the sort of gruesome death that would bring her.

“Oh,” Villanelle says. “Eve, I am close.”

Her hips are bucking up in time with Eve’s motions, muscles fluttering softly around Eve’s fingers. The noises she’s making now sound almost like she’s in pain. “Eve,” she says again, reverent, and then throws her head back against the pillow as her orgasm hits her, thighs jolting open and shut like butterfly wings.

Eve takes her time pulling away, making her touches more and more gentle until the worst of the aftershocks have come and gone. She wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and rubs her fingers against her own thigh. “Okay?” she asks.

Villanelle’s eyes are wide, her hair mussed and sticking to her sweaty neck. “Eve, you are incredible,” she says.

She lunges forward to kiss Eve, chasing the taste of herself from her lips. “I want to tear you apart,” she says, lips forming the words against Eve’s own.

“Do it,” Eve says.

And so Villanelle pushes her down against the mattress and makes a fist of Eve’s hair at the nape of her neck, her other hand sliding down along Eve’s stomach and between her legs.

“Oh, I – I should have shaved or something,” Eve says as Villanelle’s fingers start to stroke and prod, making a delicious heat start to spool in Eve’s stomach.

“Why?” Villanelle asks. “I didn’t. You are a woman, Eve. You’re allowed to have hair.”

As if to prove her point and cement her nonchalance, Villanelle slides to her knees, kissing her way down Eve’s body until she’s settled fully between Eve’s legs, resting back on her heels. And Eve’s had sex, of course, been eaten out before, but this is something on an entirely different level.

Villanelle seems determined to prove her skill, curling her tongue in and around Eve until she, too, is shaking like a leaf, poised far too soon on the brink of _almost there_. While Villanelle had become more vocal as she got closer to orgasm, Eve seems to become quieter, unconsciously holding her breath as if to prolong the inevitable.

She’s so, so close, teetering on the knife edge of _too much_ and _not enough_ all at once. And it’s all going to be over too quickly, but she can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop can’t – 

Eve comes.

*

After, Villanelle will be soft and sweet and gentle again. She will wrap Eve up in both arms and just hold her to her chest for several long moments. She will take Eve by the hand to the en-suite and sit with her on the cold bathroom tile as the shower heats up.

After, they will strip the ugly, musty-smelling comforter off the bed and curl up under just the sheets, Eve’s hair wet and dripping icy rivulets down her shoulders, Villanelle smelling like eucalyptus body wash and too-expensive face cream.

After, Eve will wake in the middle of the night, shivering from the air conditioning against her bare shoulders, and pull the comforter up from the floor, no longer caring how old it is or how little it has been washed.

After, Villanelle will whimper in her sleep and wake suddenly, sitting straight up in bed like somebody in a horror movie. Eve will get her chance to be the big spoon, stroking a hand over Villanelle’s soft, clean hair and whispering that _It’s going to be alright, you’re fine, you’re safe_.

After, they will wake in the morning, later than usual judging by the bright sunlight flooding the room from the wide-open curtains they forgot to close last night (luckily, they’re on the sixth floor), and do it all again, fucking slow and precious until Eve’s stomach growls indignantly and they have to get up to order room service.

*

Zion National Park is both exactly like Eve remembered, and not at all the same.  
As a child, she remembers being terrified that the big candy-colored rocks were all going to crumble and roll down into the canyon, crushing her to death beneath her weight. She remembers the heat, too, sun white and blinding and sending waves of heat rolling across the dirt and sand. Her family stayed in the park for a week, camping out beneath the stars alongside other families in other tents just like theirs. It was a good time, one of the only memories she really has of her family being really, truly happy.

Now that she’s older, some of the shiny wholesomeness of those days has been scrubbed away, letting her see the other, less beautiful aspects of the park. For one, the heat seems more oppressive now, settling like grainy silt in Eve’s lungs and making her sweat from places she didn’t even know she _could_ sweat from. 

But not everything that seems different is bad. Like Eve’s old fear of being crushed by tons of stone, for example. She knows that the most dangerous thing in this park right now is Villanelle – not rocks or heat exhaustion or wild creatures – and, luckily for Eve, she’s not that afraid of Villanelle anymore.

Currently, they are hiking up a winding path to some overlook Villanelle saw in the park map, linking pinkies because it’s too hot to hold hands. Everything is red and orange and green and blue and purple and Eve is suddenly struck by all the beauty that exists in the world. Up here, the air is clear and fresh and doesn’t leave her choking on the thought of all the responsibilities she’s currently neglecting (Carolyn stopped calling after three weeks of declined calls, texting Eve instead to _Let me know when you’re back in London so we can have a chat_. Eve left her on read.). 

When they reach the top of the trail, overlooking the canyon below, Eve lets herself just breathe and feel the burn of lactic acid in her muscles and forget about all the rest of it. “This is beautiful,” she says.

“You know, one time I pushed a man off a cliff in Ireland, but that was nowhere _near_ as big as this,” Villanelle says. She leans close to Eve, conspiratorially. “I’m sure the sound of a body hitting the bottom here would be _much_ more satisfying.”

Eve unconsciously takes a step backward, away from the edge. Villanelle laughs. “I’m just kidding, Eve. It was a joke.”

“The thing about jokes is they’re supposed to be funny,” Eve says in reply.

Villanelle shrugs. “Well, _I_ thought it was funny.”

Eve looks out across the canyon, at the immensity of it all. “I just can’t believe you’re this internationally-known assassin and you’ve never even been to America before,” she says. 

“I was waiting for the right travel partner,” Villanelle says.

“Aww.” Eve laughs. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only the ones I like.”

That makes Eve go a little mushy, a smoothie bowl of fondness and mirth and all other kinds of feelings that leave her willing back a blush. “So you like me?” she asks.

“I like you so much, Eve,” Villanelle says. She cups Eve’s face in both her hands, dust and sweat and sunscreen residue be damned. “I like when you are funny and when you are boring. I like the expressions you make when I say something you know you shouldn’t laugh at and I like the way your face looks when you smile. I’m obsessed with you, Eve. I like you _so much_.”

Eve takes the opportunity to kiss her, then. Because she can. Because she wants to. Because she doesn’t have the words to say all the things she wants to say in response. Villanelle tastes like zinc oxide and the granola bar she ate about a mile back. The feel of her mouth, warm and present, makes sunshine bloom bright in Eve’s chest.

“I like you, too,” she says after a while. They sit down at the rocky lip of the overlook, sandy soil sticking to the sweat on the back of Eve’s knees, feet dangling over the edge. 

“It is really beautiful,” Villanelle says.

And it really, really is. “There are so many more places I want to show you,” says Eve.

Villanelle looks at her, sun glinting through her eyelashes and making her eyes dance with color. “Then show me,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential triggers: choking, discussion of knifeplay, undernegotiated kinks
> 
> Wow... I don't even know what to say to you all. This is genuinely one of my favorite things I've ever written, like _ever_. It has been an amazing ride - two weeks of madly, constantly writing because these two just grabbed ahold of my brain and wouldn't let go. Thank you all for being so kind and supportive as I venture into this fandom. It has been the most welcoming, encouraging experience I could have hoped for. :)
> 
> I am [on tumblr](https://boxedblondes.tumblr.com/) @boxedblondes. Please come talk to me if you have any prompts/ideas for future fics or recommendations for some of YOUR favorite villaneve fics... or just to say hi! Enjoy 2x06 tonight if you haven't seen it already... I know I will.
> 
> I love you all! x


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